More Articles

Eugene Lewis awoke yesterday morning to find police at his home and a horrifying discovery
outside.

“Police knocked on the door and said, ‘You have a dead body in your front yard,’ ” said Lewis,
55, who has lived in the 1400 block of E. 23rd Avenue in the South Linden neighborhood for two
decades. “Oh, God, it was terrible.”

Patrol officers discovered the body of Nancy Devera Johnson, 35, just after 7:30 a.m. They had
been flagged down by an elderly man who said he had seen someone lying on the sidewalk.

When the officers arrived, the street was quiet. Johnson was dead from an apparent gunshot
wound.

Lewis said he didn’t hear anything happen outside his home. It wasn’t until the knock on his
door that he looked out a window and saw the woman. He noticed “a lot of blood.”